


she is bare-faced, embarrassed

by deathrae



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, i am in so deep, references to trespasser events but they're MAD vague, send help, solavellan hell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5512535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"and she doesn't know; she thinks it's because of her."</em> - Cole</p>
<p>A series of short vignettes; Lavellan tries to cope. Sometimes she succeeds. Sometimes she fails, falls, twisting in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she is bare-faced, embarrassed

>   **I.**

Dorian sat with her, curled up in a corner by the ladder to her loft. He had found her sitting on the cold stone, and it was only after a great deal of cajoling and no small measure of cursing in Tevene that he’d managed to pile up pillows under her and wrap a quilt around her thin frame, thinner now than before, he would wager. He had settled beside her inside the drape of the quilt, sitting with an arm around her shoulders and her face tucked into the side of his neck. His skin was damp from her silent tears, but he kept that to himself.

“He doesn’t look at me anymore, when I walk through his room,” she said, mumbling the words against the collar of his tunic.

“Not when you’re looking at him,” he said, tracing his fingers through her hair. If only his father could see him now, curled up in a private room, holding a woman, petting his fingers through her hair in a display of outright, heartfelt tenderness.

Oh the utter _scandal_ of it all.

She sniffed uselessly and he rubbed her shoulder.

“He does love you, you know. That’s why he’s being such a cretin about it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said, but he’d take the sullen grumble in her voice over apathy any day.

“What was it he said? You told me he said something when you got back from Crestwood. Which I’m still going to wring him out for one of these days you know, leaving you all alone out there,” he added, which earned him a faint, wet sort of chuckle.

“He said…he said to harden my heart to a cutting edge. Use the pain to fuel my fight against Corypheus.”

“I won’t pretend I know what’s going through that big elven head of his, Maker knows I’ve never been able to work out why he thinks it’s acceptable to go outside dressed like that.” She laughed softly into his coat. “But _that_ line I’ve heard before. And it sounds to me like he’s trying so hard to convince you he’s a distraction because _he_ wants to believe it too. He wants to make it about helping you, so he can feel that he has done something that is ultimately difficult, but good. So he can believe he’s hurting both of you for a good cause.”

“Why?”

He let his mouth twist in a sad smile, hugged her close, and kissed her forehead. “Because otherwise, he’s hurt both of you, just for the sake of it. And I think believing _that_ …it would kill him.”

 

> **II.**

She returned to Skyhold in a haze of confusion and pain. Her face itched still where the skin was clean and bare, like a child’s, and she scratched at it when she wasn’t thinking enough to stop herself, scratching until her skin ached with the threat of tearing. She very seriously considered letting it tear, wondering if she could scratch scars like Mythal’s mark back into her skin. She only didn’t because she wasn’t sure it would make her feel any better.

And yet, no one said anything.

They noticed, oh yes, they certainly _saw_. How could anyone have missed it? Where once had been the outspread branches of a great tree, and roots upon her chin, now was nothing, just pale skin and the old scars that had once hidden in the vallaslin like foxes in brush.

When she arrived in the library on a bright, awful morning, Dorian’s eyes widened, just slightly, but Tevinter preyed on weakness, and he didn’t show much. Varric’s eyebrows jumped before settling to a normal position when she passed him in the great hall. Cassandra bit her tongue to keep from saying anything, and Cullen tripped over a few words before he asked her politely about her plans for the coming week’s expeditions.

Bull was the only one who had no apparent reaction, the damn Ben-Hassrath, but she took to imagining she’d seen concern in the set of his jaw. Krem must’ve picked up more from the old spy than he claimed he did, because there was nothing but a sympathy in his eyes that she wasn’t expecting to see from the young soldier.

To her surprise, it was only Josephine who said something; only Josephine who let words burst out of her like water through a dam, shattering her diplomatic calm like a storm.

“Inquisitor Lavellan, I—oh!”

Every bit of training Josephine had given her before Halamshiral came back full force—it took all her will not to visibly flinch at the ambassador’s shock.

“Forgive my surprise,” she continued, without quite working the confusion out of her voice, “Your face is…”

For a moment, she thought to be offended by Josephine’s utterly uncharacteristic lack of tact. And yet, against all common sense, Josephine’s reaction was _comforting_. At least _someone_ was willing to risk her emotions to ask her about it.

“I thought those markings were permanent,” Josephine finished, hollow and uncertain.

“Solas could tell you all about it,” Lavellan said, dimly aware that the sneer in her voice and the twist to her mouth told Josephine everything she could possibly have wanted to know, even if it didn’t explain a damn thing.

“I’m sure,” Josephine said slowly, the truth hidden in Lavellan’s tone all too plain. “Perhaps we could talk of…other things, then.”

As she left, just before the Inquisitor was entirely out of earshot, Josephine’s soft voice followed her. “If ever you would like to talk,” she said, trailing off meaningfully.

“Thank you,” the Inquisitor said. “I…I may.”

 

> **III.**

She was on sentry duty with Cassandra when the words came out of her in a fumbling burst, like one of Dorian’s experimental spells he tried when he thought no one was awake to see him fail. She wasn’t obligated to take sentry duty of course, being _the Inquisitor_ , but her nightmares were worse now than ever and the Anchor was growing more daring with each rift she closed, flaring in a dull, sporadic echo of her heart. It had developed a keen ability to wake her in the middle of the night and then keep her from falling back asleep. She wished it hadn’t, but it hadn’t exactly asked her opinion on the matter, and regardless, its rebellious activity gave her an awful lot of time to think.

Which brought her to that moment, words hanging heavy in the air between them. It was well before dawn, in that window of time in the very early morning where it is dark and quiet and it’s so much easier to speak your heart when you can only partially see the other person’s face.

Cassandra snapped her gaze around to focus on the Inquisitor. She looked like she was about to ask for her to repeat the words, but then stopped and thought better of it. It was something Lavellan liked about Cassandra. She didn’t waste words, even when a flair for the dramatic might be appropriate.

She repeated it anyway, if only to fill the silence. The fact that Solas was asleep, two tents away, occurred to her only belatedly, and she lowered her voice so it was softer than before, almost too quiet to hear. But Cassandra was shrewd and trained to listen for small sounds in the dead of night that might mean ambush or battle.

Though the battle of a _heart_ was not generally the sounds she listened for.

“I mean it, I…I still love him,” she said, a third time, so quiet and absent any force that it was almost like an afterthought.

Cassandra gave her a thoughtful “hm” to acknowledge she was listening.

“I—I do. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t even know how I feel about how he…” She sighed, leaving that thought alone. “But I still do.” She worried her fingers into a tangle, tracing the seams of her gloves.

When it seemed clear to her that the Inquisitor had no more to add, Cassandra looked down at her own hands, examining the leather of her gauntlets, then turned her attention to the elf at her side, soft-faced and lip trembling in her doubt. The clear skin—where Cassandra still remembered tattoos that had scrawled across her face—made her seem simultaneously younger and older, all at once. She sifted through words, trying to combine rash, forward thought with the gentleness Josephine had been trying to beat into her since all this had started.

“Of course you do,” she said, fighting to keep a flinch off her face when Lavellan gave her a vaguely wounded look. “No, I…I do not mean that as it sounds. I only mean that you are a bold, intelligent woman, living a life and carrying a burden that has taken so much from you and given precious little back to you other than grief and suffering. Solas…” Lavellan winced and looked down at the ground, as if the very name caused pain. “He is a bold, intelligent man. You’re well-matched, and you kept each other sane. Anyone in Skyhold could see that, and many did. Of course you still love him.”

Lavellan bent, like a reed under the weight of a crow, her shoulders hunched low over her knees until her chin rested on them. “What do I do, Cassandra…”

“I’m afraid most of my romantic advice comes from terrible literature,” she admitted, smirking a little, pleased, when that startled a laugh from the Inquisitor. “And I don’t strictly recommend asking _Varric_ , either.”

“No, I probably won’t.”

“I do not know Solas nearly so well as you,” Cassandra continued, letting her gaze wander back out to the woods as she pondered it. “But perhaps, for now, it is best to give you both a little time. The wounds are fresh, and the fight with Corypheus looms ever closer. It will be easier to see the path when the way is clearer.”

“Careful,” Lavellan said with a wry smile. “That almost sounded like wisdom.”

Cassandra scoffed. “So little faith in me, Inquisitor!” She hummed thoughtfully, tapping her thumb against the hilt of her sword. “In truth, I rather imagine I took what wisdom remained in the Seekers with me when I left.”

Lavellan laughed outright, leaning against Cassandra’s shoulder with an open, plain affection that seemed somehow beautifully, purely Dalish in its expression. “I think you’re right, what little was left for you to take.” She smiled, more openly and warmly than she had in weeks. “Thank you, Cassandra.”

 

> **IV.**

“That’s why Solas left,” she gasped, less from shock and more from biting down the raw burn of Fade energy in her hand as she turned to face her team. Her arm ached more than ever. “He’s been helping us fight the Qunari all this time. We have to save him!”

Her team…hesitated. Bull looked at Dorian. Dorian looked at Bull.

“Right,” Dorian said, the word little more than a breath, barely audible. “Of course.”

“Yeah,” Bull said slowly. Softly. Being polite.

Cole just _looked_ at her, looking through her. As if even he knew that this time, the words wouldn’t matter.

She inhaled. Sharp, frustrated. “Just—come on,” she snapped, heading for the mirror in what was supposed to be a display of strength and will. But her knees wavered. Her back throbbed with the pain that was radiating out into her body from her elbow. Her fingers cramped and seized, crackling green. Her head ached, her mind recalling words in a jumble.

_Ar lasa mala revas._

**_You can all fight amongst yourselves when I’m—_ **

“Not yet,” she whispered as she reached the eluvian and stepped into the glass.

**_…when I’m back._ **

_Vhenan_.

“Not until I’ve seen him one more time.”


End file.
